been waiting here my whole damn life
by gidget89
Summary: It's a wonder, really, that he hasn't caught on to that little bit of intel. No one smiles genuinely all the time.  Gillian centric, Gillian, Cal, Alec  Rating is for language


Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue. Just playing for enjoyment :)

A/N: So I read a fabulous story in a different fandom (Nikita) that kind of used this same style. It was A Study in Transience by Gnails here, if you're curious. Just want to give credit for the inspiration behind the format. ANYWAY. It's not the first time I've written stories like this - numbered or non linear, but I started this really specifically based off of the prompt from my fictable - Not Enough. Um, it's not exactly happy. I don't think it's angstangstangst either though. IDEK. Rambling note is rambling, okay? I'll stop now. And for the record, I know there have been a lot of fic's touching on the subjest of Gillian's past posted here over the last few days, lol. I started this before that, and I guess great minds think alike or whatever, but sorry for like, adding to the spam on the subject lolol. :)

**been waiting here my whole damn life**

i.

"I'm telling you, it's _creepy_. She just... sits there and _reads_. All damn day! It's not natural." He's not even trying to be quiet, but then, he never does _try_.

"She's just deep, honey. Still waters and all that, you know?" Her voice is tired, worn-down like a bank being raged at by an angry sea, each crash just lets a little more sediment slip away.

"Yeah well," the bottle is drained and dropped on the floor with a thud. It rolls into her view and the light from the living room shines through it, making shadow and light patterns on the cream rug – so many greens, it distracts her for a moment, "she needs to cheer the fuck up. It's creepy."

She is curled in a ball on the stairs, and the tears feel hot on her face and she can't breathe even though she feels like she's suffocating.

"Kid needs to learn to smile."

ii.

Her smile always has a practiced ease to it. Eyes crinkle and every single one is genuine.

It's a wonder, really, that he hasn't caught on to that little bit of intel. _No one_ smiles genuinely _all_ the time.

But it's an art, and she has practiced the hell out of it, so she's able to smile when he needs her to and watch him walk away with a laugh.

She stands there long after the door closes, and the smile needs to be eased off of her face gradually – it hurts like a charlie horse or a muscle spasm. Like it's just been clenched too hard for too long.

Maybe she should stop smiling.

iii.

"God, Gillian, I don't understand what's _wrong_ with you. I'm not _trashed_, okay?"

Lie.

He absolutely _is_ trashed. She can smell the whiskey and beer from here, and she's currently across the room he'd dragged them into, glaring at him with her arms crossed.

"If you think that I am having _sex_ with you on Tommy Marsh's parent's _bed_ while any number of your other drunken, idiotic friends could stumble in, you are _insane_."

"Why you gotta be so uptight, babe? Jesus Christ. If I were still dating Melissa she'd have-"

"Yeah well, that's because Melissa is a _whore_, John. But if that's what you want, feel free. You can fuck _her_ in here." She can feel the heat crawling up her neck and onto her cheeks and she doesn't care, she _hates_ him. She stomps past him and wrenches open the door, glaring at him as she goes. "Asshole."

"Oh _please_, you stupid bitch. I was just trying to win a bet anyway – see who could bag the ice queen's v-card first. Your tits aren't even big enough anyway." She just walks on, because she's an expert and ignoring drunken slurs tossed her way.

At the top of the stairs everyone turns to look at her and the music gets turned down and whispers spread through the room insidiously. She twists her face in disgust – lip up, chin raised as she tosses a venomous glare over her shoulder. "As if I'd sleep with someone with a dick _that_ small. Oh and PS? I'm not a _virgin_, douchebag."

iv.

She is never not happy in her father's presence. She is cheerful and talkative and everything she thinks he wants her to be.

He still drinks.

And tells her she should 'do something with her hair.'

So she combs and braids her hair every day, and put on dresses and skirts and looks as pretty as she can while she sits up straight and smiles and smiles and _smiles_ while she talks to him.

He _still _drinks.

And asks why she doesn't have any friends.

She has friends – but he's drunk when she comes home from school and he's drunk when they eat supper and on PA days, sometimes she watches him open a beer at ten in the morning. She has friends. But she would never ever _ever_ bring them home.

So she pins pictures, all over the walls of her room. Her and her friends – sleepovers and birthday parties and beach trips and camping trips and they are all smiling in every single one.

He drinks vodka one night, and chases it with red wine and tears the photos down while screaming at her that she's _ashamed_ of her own family because she never brings these friends home.

She is still smiling the next day, but she is wearing black and eating ice cream straight from the carton when he says in his soft, apologetic, hung-over voice that she looks like a picture. So _normal_.

She smiles so brightly he can't see the tears.

v.

Alec proposes with a cherry ring pop and a charming smile by a park bench in the middle of a frosted December morning.

It had just started snowing, and they've been dating for almost a year.

He makes her laugh, and he looks at her in a way no other man ever has before – like she's unimaginable. She bites her lip and watches him, down on his knees in the frosted grass and his glasses are fogging up.

She thinks about her concept of love, and how she really does _love _him.

Maybe not as much as she should, but they're young and love grows.

She thinks.

It's possible anyway, and he _loves_ her and even better, he _wants_ her because she is more than enough for him. So she laughs, and says yes and he slips the candy ring on her finger, with a promise to buy her a better one once they finish school and hugs him so tightly that she cries.

He just pulls back and tells her to go ahead – he _knows_ she wants to eat it.

She grins, and they walk home, their cheeks frozen in too wide smiles and their tongues are red.

When she retells the story, she changes the flavour to orange. And he never ever corrects her.

vi.

The day they officially open The Lightman Group, she and Cal grin and their laughter echoes off the wall of their tiny, postage stamp sized empty office space.

The carpet is thin and worn down, but she kicks her shoes off anyway, and they open a bottle of white wine and she bounces around while waving their very first case file under his nose.

Okay, so it's totally just a consult on a police case, but it is _theirs_ and they are going to _prove_ to the world that they can do this together. The folder is orange, and this makes the bubble of happiness in her seem _so_ big it could swallow the whole room.

They have no furniture – just one filing cabinet and a chair and an old radio that is always on the jazz station.

Miles Davies' 'Summertime' comes on and he dances her around the room with a grin on his face.

He toasts to everything – the tiny office, to their partnership, to orange file folders and the police department, to his daughter's spelling test and those ugly red shoes she wears when she's alone in her office which she never will be again, because it's _their_ office now.

She laughs and drinks to every single one.

vii.

It's not like he _hits_ her when he drinks.

He never even gets really _blindingly_ drunk all that often. But it's like – it's like beer is his substitute for water, and he exceeds the recommended daily intake.

And it's just a fact in her house that if you want Dad to do anything, you better have a six pack for his troubles.

And sure there are no rages, but just once – in her whole life, just _once_ –

She'd like to think he could spend time with her without having to dull the pain.

Shouldn't this _not_ be painful?

And she tries and she tries and she _tries._

But none of it is ever enough to get him to put down the bottle.

_She's_ never enough.

viii.

Her first college party, she gets high.

Because she's always hated drinking.

So when a guy sitting next to her offers her a joint, she smokes it and thinks _why not?_

And she likes it actually. There's a clarity to being stoned that just doesn't exist with alcohol. A languidness and she is laughing her ass off, but she is fully aware that what she's laughing at isn't _that_ funny.

Except it kind of _really_ fucking is.

She's high, but she feels absolutely in control of herself – like, for example she wouldn't be making any questionable sexual choices any time soon, and she was aware that she couldn't operate a car – or any machinery at all for that matter – right now.

She's just laughing and laughing and _really_ wants a cheeseburger.

Or a Happy Meal because those come with _toys_. So she wants a Happy Meal with like, _five_ cheeseburgers. And she says this. A lot.

Until finally one guy who is the designated driver looks over and asks her if she'd like to take a drive to McDonald's. She is _all_ over that.

She gets her five cheeseburgers and forgoes the fries, because they're bad for her and he watches her eat and laughs at her stupid jokes.

He decides to say screw his friends, they can find their own rides home, and buys one more bag of cheeseburgers and they go back to his place where they proceed to roll another joint and watch Saturday Night Live.

And yeah, so that's the story of how she meets Alec.

ix.

She goes to work, and she can tell that Cal hasn't _showered_, let alone gone home to sleep or change his shirt.

It's not like his wardrobe is so varied that anyone would notice, but she does and pulls him aside.

She smiles, and tells him gently to go home and come back in an hour. He argues, gets belligerent, and walks away _twice_.

She chases after him both times, and each time her smile is a little more forced.

She can smell beer on his breath and finally she gives him a _look_ and informs him that he smells like an alcoholic (_and I would know_) and that he needs a shower because he _stinks_, so would he please, please, _please_ go home?

He stares at her in dumbfounded silence for a minute before focussing on her face and tilting his head to the left.

He doesn't go home until he extracts the full meaning behind her allusion to alcoholism. She cries, and tells him it's _stupid_ and resists and resists while he presses and presses until finally he just figures it out for himself.

He goes home.

He showers.

And she never sees him drink beer in front of her again.

x.

When Alec meets Cal (it sounds like a joke but it's _not_) she feels awkward. Sort of like she'd imagine a cheater feels if their mistress ever met their wife.

Not that she's a _cheater_.

Anyway, they all meet awkwardly at the office, three weeks after they've moved in, and they are working on their second case and Cal is getting frustrated by their crappy recording equipment so he's not in the best mood. And Alec is pissy because she's been working late nights because there is _just_ the two of them and they really need to try to wrap cases up within a week, _maximum_, if they want to be able to do things like oh say, _pay bills_.

So what results is so much male posturing, she almost sprouts a penis herself while watching it occur.

Alec is passive aggressive and this shocks the _hell_ out of her, because she would never have used that word to describe him before today.

Cal is _aggressive_ aggressive, but there is no shock, because she figures that this is his default setting.

He _does_ notice her decidedly unhappy look and manages to pull back somewhat, however. She's not particularly happy that the man who noticed her distress and accommodated it _wasn't_ her husband.

xi.

Their wedding is a big deal, and Gillian finds herself wishing the day before that they had just gone to some stupid chapel in Vegas and _gotten it over with_.

The paperwork hasn't arrived from the archdiocese and she has this, God forgive her, _asshole_ of a priest telling her she should _pray_ it arrives, and her maid of honour isn't speaking to one of her bridesmaids, and the flowers are the wrong colour, but whatever, it works. She wants to be _really_ drunk right now, but she doesn't _do_ that, so she just glares at the priest, tells the bridesmaids to _work it the fuck out_, and calls the florist and yells at that woman until she makes her cry _and _promise her a discount.

She feels better after that.

But then her soon-to-be brother -in-law _carries_ a passed out Alec in the apartment and he is ridiculously wasted. She makes Alec's brother put him in bed and then kicks him out and when she sees white powder on Alec's black pants she goes to brush it off. But something – some small voice tells her to just _taste_ it, and after she does –

Well.

She cries for four straight hours.

She looks terrible the next morning but not as terrible as he does, and she _screams_ at him for forty minutes straight while he swears up and down that it was a one-time thing, and he would never ever do it again, he didn't even _like_ it.

She finally calms down enough to look at him with a puffy, tear-swollen face. (_You could have died, Alec._)

He apologizes for thirty more minutes and she's almost late for her hair and make-up appointment.

The bridesmaids took one look at her, and then each other, and everyone got along fucking _fabulously_ that day.

She sniffles and gets her hair washed and tells herself that this will just be a _really_ funny story to tell to their very close friends one day.

xii.

The first time she gets drunk – _blindingly_ drunk – she is eighteen and mad as hell.

Her father showed up at her graduation today, and he was drunk enough that he stumbled when walking and got handsy with the row in front of him as he tried to get to his seat. Everyone turned those _oh, poor Gillian_ eyes on her.

So she was pissed, _beyond_ pissed. She went to her grad party and drank long island iced tea until she threw up, rebounded and then drank some more.

She spent the night hung over the toilet, dry heaving while her father screamed at her about god damn responsibility and being too young to fucking drink, and how could she do this to them? Her poor mother was _crying_ and it was all her god damned fault.

Finally, when the heaving subsided but the screaming didn't, she stood up unsteadily, stupid with drunken bravery and screamed right back at him. (_I learned from the best, and don't you fucking talk to me about what I'm doing to Mom, when you've had a twenty year head start on that._) He'd blinked and gone _really_ white before getting _really_ red, and he'd never ever ever hit her in his life.

Until that night.

She cried herself to sleep, her face stinging and her arm bruised from where he'd dragged her down the hall and _thrown_ her into her room.

She didn't start her university scholarship for another two months, but she packed everything she owned the next morning and calmly informed her mother that she was leaving _now_, and she'd talk to her when she left her Dad.

She didn't speak to either of her parents for another seven years.

xiii.

He calls her right after Zoe leaves him.

Well, correction.

He goes to a bar, drinks ridiculous amounts of alcohol and _then_ calls her from the cab on his way home.

She can tell he's drunk. Hell, _Alec_ can tell he's drunk because he is lying in bed next to her and Cal is that ridiculously _loud _drunk person on the phone. Like he can't quite grasp the concept that yes, she can _hear_ him just fine. She ignores Alec's _very_ clear 'No, no, no, no, _NO_' looks and tells him she'll be right there.

She hangs up and looks at her husband who is sitting up on his elbows and looking at her with disappointment.

But she shrugs, and mumbles something about how if the situations were reversed – (_You think about that one often, do you, Gillian?_) – and she slips out of bed and out of the hands that are trying to grasp her arms and keep her there.

She pulls on pyjama pants and a bra and a tank top and throws a hoodie on top of all that and she is out of the door with Alec's _please dont's _and _he doesn't need you_'s ringing in her ears.

He _does_ need her.

Alec just doesn't _want _him too.

She hums while she drives to keep herself awake and lets herself into his house when she gets there. She has a key to his place, but he doesn't have one to hers. Sometimes, when she has time, she finds this ironic, because she is open and _he_ is closed.

But not with everything.

She finds him curled up in Emily's bed, clutching her pillow and not crying but as close to it as she's ever seen him.

And he talks.

And he talks and he talks and he _talks_ more than he ever has in their entire relationship.

He talks about how much he loves his daughter, and how he tried to make it work. But it didn't work. And he talks about how he and Zoe had been fighting more, and how he proposed _after_ the pregnancy test, which should have been a fucking sign.

She listens. To every single word, and doesn't sooth him, or offer advice, she just sits on the floor by the bed and rests her cheek on the edge of the mattress and she watches him and listens.

Finally he stops talking and just stares at her. (_It's my fault._) He is so drunk his words blur together softly but she can hear the edge underneath and one of his hands releases the pillow he has hugged to his chest and it reaches out, clumsily touching her face. He just looks at her, and she can see him blinking slowly in the soft light of the desk lamp. He's almost asleep. (_Sh'knew I loved you more_.)

He falls asleep.

And then _she_ cries.

xiv.

It's an accident.

Two blue lines on a stick she just urinated all over and then _stared_ at for ninety seconds and her stomach is somewhere around her toes and she thinks she could _vomit_.

She's not ready for a baby.

She's not _ready_ for a baby.

But fate has something else in mind and she is swallowing bile, thinking over and over again as she clutches the porcelain lip of her tub. This should be something _happy_. And it wasn't planned and she's not ready, and all she can think is the first time she learned about her son or daughter's _existence_, she felt absolute _dread_.

xv.

Sometimes she hates him.

Hates him because he gets to go out, snort innocuous looking powder up his nose and _forget_ everything that she sits at home _alone_ and thinks about.

He thinks she can't tell.

Thinks she doesn't _notice_, yeah, she _fucking_ notices okay? She does his laundry and sees his eyes, all iris and _not _because she happens to not look good that night. He chooses to go out there and snort oblivion straight into his blood stream and she chooses to sit in an empty room and cry so much she feels like she will turn inside _out_.

Sometimes, she wonders why the fuck she's still _here_.

_At all_.

xvi.

She loves her mother, because she spends extra time with her to compensate for the fact that her father, well –

To compensate _for_ her father.

She teaches her how to bake. And how to cook. And how to do a perfect French braid.

She tucks her into bed every night even though she's a little old for it now, and she reads with her, or does stupid quizzes from teen magazines with or, or sometimes they lay in bed and watch whatever is on the television.

She _loves_ her mother.

She just hates her _choices_.

xvii.

After the third miscarriage, she thinks it's time to give up.

She thinks if she feels that particular _twinge_ one more time, if she has to get a _mild sedative _and a _numbing_ shot while a nameless, faceless doctor _scrapes_ and vacuums her out until she's hollow once more, she may go _insane_.

She just – she just _can't_. She can't. Not anymore. Not anymore, and she just _can't_.

She spends her nights at the office. Because Alec won't be home when she gets there. He'll be out taking his own mild sedative and numbing agents. And she _hates_ him right now anyway, because she knows – she knows, she _knows_ he blames her for all of this.

He doesn't ever _say_ it.

But he doesn't ever _have_ to.

And she drinks scotch and sits in her empty office, in her empty building at her empty desk contemplating her empty womb and her empty _life_.

Cal comes in, almost as haggard looking as she is because Zoe and Emily have only been gone for a little over a month. He stands in the doorway and simply _looks_ at her before crossing the room and pulling her out of her chair. He leads them over to the sofa, and they both sink into it with a sad sigh.

His arm wraps around her and he hugs her to his side tightly. She turns her head with tears in her eyes and looks at him and sniffs slightly. (_I hate this.)_ His finger s squeeze her shoulder and she loves that and he tilts his head to look at her (_What?)_ and she can see the lines by his eyes (_Everything.)_ and she can see his sad smile and the way his eyes are soft and his voice is softer (_Not me though?_) and she thinks she _loves_ him a little bit.

She moves.

And he moves.

And they kiss.

And before the guilt sets in, and before the shock sobers her up a little bit, before she pulls away but after her fingers are in his hair, she _knows_.

It's not a little bit at all.

xviii.

Her parents show up one day out of the blue, when she is twenty-six.

She is a _doctor_ with an important job, and she feels a bit of spite in showing that to them. They are shocked when they find out she got married.

Without them.

She is shocked that they are here together.

_Still_.

Her father cries, and apologizes. Talks about AA and how he'll make it up to her. She stands there awkwardly and doesn't know how to tell him that she doesn't really think that will ever be possible.

Her mother cries and hugs her tightly, for twenty minutes straight. And she cries, because yeah, she still loves her Mom.

They exchange stilted conversation in between bouts of painful honesty. They feel better when they leave, she can tell.

She really _doesn't_ though.

xix.

He slouches on her couch and deflects every question she asks him like a _pro_.

Really, because he _is_ a pro.

But his body language, and more importantly the _opposite_ of what it is saying fascinates her. _He_ fascinates her. He reads her, and turns the tables so many times during the one hour session that she honestly feels a bit dizzy afterward.

But he looks at her after his hour is up, with the first genuine expression she's seen all day. _Curiosity_. He is narrowing his eyes and staring at her with fascination and he leans forward and so does she, which is a giveaway tell, but she doesn't care. She has nothing to hide.

A flashing thought of a man in a dark coat and dark pants and mud on his shoes in her foyer staring at her with a dark gaze crosses her mind and she amends.

Nothing _much_ to hide.

She can tell he sees that memory too because his head is tilted and he licks his lips in anticipation. She says nothing, even under the heavy pressure of his gaze. He smiles suddenly, and stands. (_Congratulations, love.)_

She remains seated, perfectly alright with letting him think this is his assertion of power. (_For what_?)

(_Keeping up_.)

xx.

She leaves him.

Or rather, she kicks him out. After the night she never even thinks about (never _admits_ to thinking about) in her office with Cal, but Alec's tears and mournful eyes and promises make her falter. He checks himself into rehab which makes her change her mind.

He's what she knows.

And he _loves_ her. And he is making an effort to let her be _enough_ for him.

Cal. Well, he's unknown. And even more unpredictable. And hasn't said a word about anything that happened _that_ night. She knows he wants to forget it, too – different reasons than hers, and she'd wager she could guess them all, but he wants to pretend and she just never was a good risk taker. Not with this.

Not with her heart.

xxi.

She doesn't know how they got here really.

Every time she tries to think about it, her chest hurts and her eyes sting and she develops sudden sinus issues and _jesus christ_.

She bites her lip and pauses, her hand tightening on the glass in front of her.

Really, she doesn't know how _she_ got here.

What the hell was wrong with her? Because, according to scientific theory – it _had_ to be her. She was the constant variable in all of these relationships. All these men who couldn't seem to find her _enough_ – logically, it must means that she's _not_ enough, right?

She takes another drink and it tastes bitterer than the last.

Maybe she'd just get a fucking dog.

xxii.

She was never Daddy's little girl.

Oh, she tried when she was younger, and even into her teenage years she secretly longed for his approval or his notice or his anything, really. She just wanted him to _see_ her.

She failed classes, and broke laws and got arrested (twice).

Being the good little girl hadn't worked.

But being the bad girl didn't work either, and she realized this at sixteen, going into her sophomore year of school. She needed to be able to take care of _herself_ when she left. And so, suddenly she was getting top grades again, taking advanced classes and _trying_ again.

Difference was, this time she was trying for her _own_ sake.

And no one else's.

xxiii.

She just can't handle him choosing the drugs over her, twice.

And deep down, she knows that this has been an issue with him throughout their entire marriage, and she berates herself for being so god damned blind about it.

She never thought she would see a day that she would be _glad_ that Sophie had been taken. But she thinks about going through this divorce – about dealing with Alec's addiction _while_ raising a child and she shudders. She wouldn't wish this on Sophie – she loved her too much for that. And she wasn't naive enough to believe that losing Sophie was the _cause_ of Alec's drug use.

It was just the convenient excuse. A justification for something that he'd been doing for _years_ anyway.

She'd married him because she wanted to be accepted, and loved. She'd wanted stability and safety in her life, someone who would always be there because they had _chosen_ to be there.

She's not a fan of the irony that is the candy coating on her divorce.

xxiv.

She knows him better than he thinks she does.

She definitely knows she can read him far better than he can read her.

He thinks she loves him.

He thinks she will only be hurt by him.

He's right about both things, but he isn't thinking clearly, and he is conveniently ignoring the existence of multifactorial causation for her behaviour. It's a fundamental theme in their area of study. He has a psychology doctorate, just like she does, but he's been studying his own specific science for so long, he's forgotten the rules of what it was based on in the first place.

He sees lies, upon lies, upon lies, upon lies – but what he _doesn't_ see is the mountain of reasons behind the lies. In his mind, there is one cause for every act – every lie, every truth, every inquiry, every silence.

That's not how it works.

And she keeps waiting for him to just _see_ that.

xxv.

He assumes it's his choice – their dance that they've been doing for years. This waltzing will they or won't they or will they or won't they repetitive footwork they've been engaged in for close to a decade.

For her, it's never been about will or won't. It's been about should or shouldn't.

Should she?

Or shouldn't she?

The problem isn't with him. It never has been, because she has always seen who and what he is. He is not perfect. He actually isn't even very _ideal_. He's is a pessimist and she is a realist masked as an optimist. He is has history he won't tell her about, and she has history he doesn't even know _exists_.

None of this is the start of any type of fairytale. She's beyond expecting those anyway.

But he actually believes that the state of their relationship has always been _his_ to choose. _He_ feels like he cannot hurt her, so he pushes her away. _He_ feels like he cannot possibly deserve her, so he never attempts to reach that next level.

Some days she almost wishes he _would_. Just to see the expression on his face when he finds out it's never been _his_ choice.

It's always been hers.

And she's not enough.

Not even for herself.

But he doesn't make the attempt. Even though he comes almost almost _almost_ close sometimes.

She just continues to wait.


End file.
